Scurrying across this great land of ours. Homeward bound. Finally. Will pop in here as time allows throughout the week, though that may not be much. We'll see...

The great BRAD BLOG Guest Bloggers will fill gaps as needed here, and we'll look forward to getting back to business in full by next week.

If the Democracy/Radio Gods are with us (and we can find our new Left Coast Homebase!) we'll be back on the air this Saturday with another LIVE show! Guest list, etc. to come as the week rolls on. Hopefully we'll find our new broadcast home, because we've already got some amazing guests pencilled in! Details soon!

UPDATE: Fixed the incorrect link to the Ted Kalo interview above. Had it as "third hour" and then pointed to the first! Should have been second, and so it has been corrected! Thanks CoreyK for pointing out my error!

Safe home, Brad. Hopefully we can start talking about Ray Lemme again one of these days. He's been lost in the shuffle, it seems to me, amid all the media criticism, however justified it is, and the ethical bankruptcy of Bush, DeLay, Feeney, etc. etc.

There is an effort going on herehttp://www.velvetrevolut...pBB2/viewtopic.php?t=292 (sorry I don't know what code to use to make it a direct link) where we are trying to get feedback/name for a web site we are giving birth to that will allow all of us to keep up-to-date on what legislation is being passed in Congress.

Another interesting note,I read this morning where Governors of the states are protesting the (REAL I.D.) There is a site you can go to,I do not know how to put it on here,but it is www.nga.org,check it out,and contact your governors,let them know how we feel about the I.D.Act also,encourage them to protest it also.Get your emails and letter,phone calls going.Lets give them a run for their money.Even if it passes,if the states won't do it,then it won't get done.

Your effort is great. It's something I have wished & prayed for. I had found it on another thread a couple of days ago, and just realized you were trying to link to it again --- here's the link folks --- check it out on VR:

I'm sorry to say that we are all in trouble. I caught this one too late to really give anyone any ideas. The Real ID Act was slipped into the appropriations for the war on terrorism and has passed both the house and sentate. It goes this month to Bush for signature. This site is a good site to track that kind of thing.

This Real ID act is going to have a huge impact if something isn't done. It will enable the federal government to track everywhere we go, deny us our rights to travel, collect govt benefits, our private information will be out there for any hacker to find.

Here are two articles I found, This one and this one but there are tons out there. Go google and type in Real ID Act and you can find out all about it. I found out yesterday when it was already passed. They slid it in as a rider with the budget appropriations because it is not allowed to filibuster an appropriations bill. It had already been tried and failed on it's own. I can see why. It's going to be voluntary for states to participate in the program. But citizens of states who won't participate will be denied benefits such as social security and the ability to fly or take a train. What the hell. More as I find it.

On your way home if the Terror Alert is raised don't take it too seriously. Tom Ridge says that the admin manipulated those alerts for political reasons over his (conservative) protests (link here).

I picked up the link at RAW STORY.

Pretty soon the whole body politic will become "disgruntled employees" of the bu$hit mis-administration.

This is a quote from the article:

"The Bush administration periodically put the USA on high alert for terrorist attacks even though then-Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge argued there was only flimsy evidence to justify raising the threat level, Ridge now says."

And now the bu$hit fascists have a national ID card law passed. Surely this is not going to get under the radar.

I think we have good ammunition now for the '06 elections.

DeLay and Bu$h have become traitors to the republican moderate conservatives who are just as important as the neocon religionists who now are instigating this madness.

It is time for the sane republicans to take back their party and to throw out the neocon thugs.

Psst.. in follow up to the last brad show (Ok, maybe this is in the wrong thread. Sue me).. I wrote in requesting more info on the repube rewrite to a dem ammendment that tried to "spin" the dems into being "sexual predator" proponents, when they actually weren't.

I found the goods over at rawstory. Looks like the ammendment was to some legal mumbo jumbo about an INTERSTATE ABORTIONS BILL (sounds like it had nothing to do with "sexual predators" whatsoever.. besides.. "sexual predator"??? Can we clarify that please...I think every junior high school boy and 35 year old woman could be categorized as.. oh.. nevermind)

The GOP rewrite, were it not a shame that such a thing were written by the supposed lawmakers of our nation, are pretty humorous (was it just a prank nonetheless?):

Excuse me people,but I need to vent,I was just reading on Congress.org about a squad of Marines that were wiped out in Iraq.The person that put the story on Congress.org ask at the last,:when was someone going to stand up and stop this madness:well,we are the someone's.When we stand up in the millions,stop traffic,stop everything and march to the white house and demand that Bush is impeached,when we go in the thousands,not hundreds,to our people in congress and demand that they start thinking about us,not them,not the money they take from 'BUSHES RICH FRIENDS,but our people,US,then someone can do something,I want to know why millions of people aren't out in protest,there are more of us than them,what is it going to take.We are standing by and letting our freedoms go down the drain,WHY!!

Our work is under attack and we need your help. Greg Palast has never and will never pay a dime to "settle" law suits against our journalism.

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Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." To view his writings go to www.GregPalast.com
TONY BLAIR DIDN'T WIN
Thursday May 5, 2005
A British reporter from America explains why Britons voted for a guy named 'Brown' - not Blair
By Greg Palast Tony Blair wasn't re-elected Thursday. However, he will remain in office.

That's because Brits don't vote for their Prime Minister. They've got a "parliamentary" system there in the Mother Country. And the difference between democracy and parliamentary rule makes all the difference. It is the only reason why Blair will keep his job --- at least for a few months.

Let me explain. The British vote only for their local Member of Parliament. The MPs, in turn, pick the PM. If a carpenter in Nottingham doesn't like Prime Minister Blair (not all dislike him, some detest him), the only darn thing they ccold do about it is vote against their local MP, in this case, the lovely Alan Simpson, a Labour Party stalwart who himself would rather kiss a toad than cuddle with Tony.

Therefore, the majority of the Queen's subjects --- deathly afraid of the return of Margaret Thatcher's vampirical Tory spawn --- held their noses, voted for their local Labour MP and prayed that an act of God will save their happy isle. Exit polls indicate the British were evenly divided: forty percent wanted Blair to encounter a speeding double-decker bus and forty percent wanted him stretched, scalded and quartered in the Tower of London (within a sampling margin of four percent).

Why? Well, to begin with, Blair lies. A secret memo from inside Blair's coven discovered this week made clear that Britain's Prime Minister knew damn well, eight months before we invaded Iraq, that George Bush was cooking the intelligence info on "WDM," but Blair agreed to tag along with his master.

The Prime Minister's coterie sold his nation on the re-conquest of their old colony, Iraq, by making up this cockamamie story about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction that could take out London in 45 minutes. But Brits knew that was 'bollocks' (no translation available) long before this week's shock-horror memo story.

A greater blight on the Prime Minister's reputation: Blair likes American presidents. While his habit of keeping his nose snug against Bill Clinton's derriere was a bit off-putting, his application to George Bush's behind makes Blair's countrymen retch.

I watched the machinery called Tony Blair up close as a Yankee in King Blair's court (first as an advisor on the inside, then as a journalist also on the inside, but with a hidden tape recorder).

And it was eerie. Because what I saw was a man who, while Britain's putative leader, scorns his own country. That is, he scorns the union workers that wanted to keep filthy coal mines open; he scorns the nostalgic blue-haired ladies who wanted to keep the Queen's snout on their nation's currency; he scorns his nation of maddeningly inefficient little shops on the high street, of subjects snoozy with welfare state comforts and fearful of the wonders of cheap labor available in far-off locales.

Blair doesn't want to be Prime Minister. He wants to be governor in London of America's 51st state.

Britons know this. They feel deeply that their main man doesn't like the Britain he has. And that is why the average punter in the pub longs to be led by that most English of British politicians --- who is not English at all --- Gordon Brown, the Scotland-born Chancellor of the Exchequer.

And so they vote for their local Labour MP on that party's quietly whispered promise that, shortly after the election, Gordon Brown, defender of the old welfare state, union rights, and a gentleman unlikely to invade forgotten remnants of the empire, will, on a vote of his parliamentary confreres, take the reins of government in his benign and prudent hands.

As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman says, Tony Blair is a man of principle. So was the Ayatolla Khomeini. Both were willing to have others pay any price for their beliefs.

Luckily for Britain, Chancellor Brown won't let Blair put his fanatic hands on the kingdom's cash or coinage. And herein is another difference betwixt the US and UK. In America, the Treasury Secretary is little more than the President's factotum. In Britain, the Chancellor holds the nation's purse. Brown brilliantly controls Britain's spending, taxing and currency. For example, despite Tony's pleas, Brown presciently nixed England dumping the pound coin for the euro.

And thus Brown, not Blair, has earned his nation's gratitude for the island's steady recovery from Thatcherite punishments while, across The Pond, real wages in Bush's America are falling.

Blair will hold onto office - for now - due only to a sly campaign that relied on the public's accepting on faith that, sooner rather than later after Thursday's vote, Blair will do the honorable thing and end his own political life, leaving the British-to-the-bone Brown to inherit the parliamentary throne. Tony's political corpse can then be mailed to Texas - wrapped in an American flag.

Greg Palast, former columnist for Britain's Guardian papers, is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Subscribe to his columns at www.GregPalast.com

I was listening to C-Span and heard Sen. Voinovich speak. Oh, goodie, he said he couldn't support the John Bolton nomination. It was great! There's hope, people. Let's keep on the pressure. I e-mailed him thanks for being an independant thinker. Oh jump for joy!!!

Thanks, Brad, for all you do. Safe trip and have some fun in there too.

I am certainly waiting with bated (or should I say baited?) breath for the next still-iffy, tenuous, postulated show! I love them! Oh, do a rain-dance or something for Brad's finding of a home studio!!

As for cats: MY cat has a pet dog, a very large Golden Retriever who is required to wear a license tag and be on a leash at all times. The authorities are very strict about this, and about rabies innoculation requirements.

Has it never occurred to the geniuses ruling the roost that CATS are far more likely to contract rabies under current laws? Why are they exempted from laws of licensing and restraint?

Kes - We have coyotes, skunks, fishers and bears. But the feral cats multiply. And the irresponsible owners multiply as well. EVERY YEAR there is a different batch (of cats) congregating around our barn. EVERY YEAR an increasingly-rare yellow warbler pair nests in our shrubbery, only to be massacred by neighbors' cats. The yellow warbler is particularly vulnerable because it has a very short (two-three-month) breeding season and only nests once. I've come upon grisly remains more times than I care to contemplate.

Czaragorn - Fortunately, Mute Swans do not frequent this part of Maine. They're a real problem in other parts of New England. I wonder if they could be trained as cat police?

And yeah...where is the excessively-aggrandized M. Moore when the * REALLY hits the fan for true-blue journalists?! Should we hold a "shame-a-thon"? Palast is made of the stuff democracy is cemented with. Moore should be reminded of the people who made his name.

I just don't get it --- how in the world do the Dems expect to EVER get elected again? Are they really that DIM? I cannot imagine anyone in the world of politics being incapable of understanding the impact of black box voting machines and central tabulators.

I'm going to cop your last paragraph & send it to all my Congresspeople.